One of the major contributions of computers and software to people's daily lives was the automation of widely used tasks such as word processing and spreadsheet calculations. Not only did word processing, spreadsheet, and similar applications automate and make those tasks usable by anyone, but they also added many new capabilities in manipulating a wide range of documents and data. Until recently, a typical environment included a standalone or networked computer with a particular application installed on it. Thus, the user was working with an application installed and executed on their local computer using data also stored locally. One disadvantage of this approach is that applications may have to be reinstalled every time an updated version is available, the computing device is replaced, etc.
A recent trend in providing the same document creation and manipulation capabilities without the burden of having a full scale application installed on the user's computer is enabling users to perform the same tasks through web access. In a typical web access service, the user may utilize a hosted service to create new documents, manipulate existing ones through a networked medium such as the Internet. The documents may be stored by the hosted service or at the user's local computer. However, as networked communication and Internet capabilities progress, the one application—one service model is changing too with some of the desired configurations not being addressed by conventional systems.